


Coping

by nowafangirl



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Death, Love, M/M, Pain, Resurrection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-12
Updated: 2015-06-12
Packaged: 2018-04-04 01:22:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4121155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nowafangirl/pseuds/nowafangirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Cas is dead." Dean repeats it to himself trying to understand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coping

The damn bottle was empty again. At this rate Dean could build a house out of empty bottles in a few weeks, maybe a month. A lonely house. Dean felt as empty as his whiskey bottle as he tossed it aside, and it promptly cracked on the floor. Sam had tried to get him to talk. He had tried to bribe Dean with cases, food, girls, and even pleading for help with something. Nothing would get Dean out of his room. Dean was too hollow to feel any desire to do a damn thing. 

At least, when he was steadily drinking he was hollow. If he slipped up and let himself get sober, though, Dean was a wreck of a man full of pain and confusion, and the anger those two things cause. 

Even when he was hollow one question would still circle through Dean’s mind. Why? 

Why would Cas be brought back from the dead repeatedly just for it to end like that? Why wasn’t this like the other times? Why wouldn’t the image of the wing scorch marks leave Dean’s head? Why? Why? Why? Just over and over and over again swirling through Dean’s mind in an all-consuming whirlwind of agony. 

Dean knew the answer to only one of the why’s. He knew why the image of Cas’ vessel lying motionless on the ground with the black outline of his magnificent wings burned into the earth beside him wouldn’t leave his mind. And it wasn’t just because Cas had been another good friend that Dean had let die. It was more than that. It was something that Dean had been to foolishly stubborn to admit when the bastard was still alive. 

He loved Castiel. 

The first time the words had whispered through his mind in answer to Dean’s sea of “why,” Dean had frozen with the bottle halfway to his lips. He loved him. God, Dean loved him so damn much. And it all rushed to him like a tsunami because all at once the mental barrier that had held back his romantic thoughts had burst. It shattered into a million pieces almost as small as the pieces of Dean’s heart when he saw Cas’ lifeless face all scratched and bruised. He remembered everything about Cas that he loved so dearly, which was basically everything about Cas. The way his eyes shot lightning bolts through Dean’s body with their piercing blue gaze. The way he always looked disheveled. His continued fondness for humanity. His faith in his father even when he seemed to have none, just like Dean. The soft curves of his lips. The intensity he emanated. His long, dark lashes. The many sides to him that had been revealed with time. His rough voice. His hands that were simultaneously strong and soft on the few occasions they had touched Dean. Far too few occasions. 

Dean had never told him how he cared. He had never told Castiel just how much faith he had in him or how strong he thought he was or how his very presence was one of the most comforting things he had ever felt in his life, even in the darkest of times. Not only that, but he had been so god damn stubborn and unwilling to act on any of it that he hid it from himself. He had had himself almost convinced that Cas was just his good buddy, and that in itself seemed a dishonor. Because how could that perfect being ever be viewed and treated as anything less than flawless? And now Dean would never have a chance to tell Cas any of it. Cas died never knowing that Dean really, truly, in every sense loved him. He wasn’t an angel to Dean. He was the god he prayed to. 

Half a bottle of whiskey later, Dean was unconscious and dreaming of Castiel’s lifeless form. Just like every other night for the past week and a half. 

* 

“That mother fucker!” Dean shouted as he charged down the vamp that had just thrown Sammy out of the way to flee. 

As the blade sliced through the spine of its neck, Dean felt satisfied. That’s a good sign, according to Sam. Any emotion besides anger was supposedly “Dean’s friend.” 

It had been three months since Cas died. Dean still woke most nights after dreams remembering watching him fall and shielding his eyes from the flash of light as his wings burned or burying him, trench coat and all, that same night. Sometimes, after the burial dream, Dean would wake with the same frantic feeling that they shouldn’t have buried him. How was he supposed to come back under six feet of dark, heavy earth? But then Dean would remember how long it had been. He would remember that Cas wasn’t coming back this time. He would remember, again and again and again, how much he loved that angel. Somewhere in all this remembering Dean would drift back into another nightmare. 

Sam knew about the nightmares, and he knew, though he would never mention it to Dean, that his brother had loved Castiel in a way that he would never get over. He knew because it was Sam’s story, too. Only his angel had been blonde and lighthearted rather than dark and intense. Sam was just happy, however, that after two weeks of drinking his days away and losing a substantial amount of weight, Dean had started leaving his room. Slowly this had led to going back to working cases. As long as Dean was doing something he could cope, but he had to have something to focus all of his energy on. They were working nonstop. No sleep, no pit stops, no days off. And Sam would run himself into the ground before he tried to tell Dean he needed a break because Dean needed this and couldn’t be alone no matter what he said. 

That night at the bar, Dean had another mini-hallucination in which he saw Cas walking by. He had grown accustomed to these, so he didn’t take them seriously anymore. They still left him shaken though. Much later into the evening, when Dean thought he was sleeping, Sam heard something that damn near broke his heart. 

“I’m sorry,” Dean whispered hoarsely in his cheap motel bed. “I’m sorry I wasn’t ever good enough to him. I’m sorry I didn’t always believe him. And I am so so sorry that I couldn’t save him.” Dean’s voice cracked, but a moment later he continued, “I know I don’t deserve for you to even be listening to me right now; I know I’ve screwed everything up too many times. But if you’re listening, please, please,” he drew out the word like he was groveling at someone’s feet, “please send him back to me. Give me just one more chance to protect him. And…” Dean hesitated, “And if you won’t do that will you please somehow let him know how sorry I am?” 

Sam said nothing the next morning when Dean pretended to sleep late just so he didn’t have to get out of bed. Sam never brought up anything but new cases to Dean for fear of setting him back into solitary grieving and drinking, but Dean hadn’t had a drink in a month and a half. Not even when they went to a bar at the end of a long day. He would just sit there. 

* 

The motel room was too quiet. Sammy was out researching. He had finally started leaving Dean alone for more than an hour about two months ago once Dean had been up and hunting again for about five months. Dean had nothing to do but sit with his thoughts now, and that was never good. He had managed to train himself to sometimes go a full hour without thinking about Cas, but not when he was alone. Right now the memories, good and bad, were flooding to him. 

As he walked back to his bed from the crappy kitchen he heard something familiar. Something he often thought he heard but never really did. It was the rustle of wings, big, dark, powerful wings that had scorched the ground outside a warehouse nine months ago. He heard it right behind him, but Dean knew well enough by now that it hadn’t really happened. So he kept walking to his bed. 

“Dean,” the word was voiced breathlessly behind him, and Dean froze. 

Slowly, painfully so, Dean turned around. It wasn’t possible. It just wasn’t possible. But there he was, trench coat and all. 

“I got your message,” Cas said with what looked like the ghost of a smile on his face. 

Fuck it, Dean thought. If he was going to hallucinate this vividly he might as well make the most of it. And with that thought Dean crossed the room in three quick strides, placed his hands on Cas’ very real, very present face, and pressed his lips to the soft, full lips of the angel he had thought dead for nine months. Cas circled his arms around Dean’s back and held him closely. As their lips parted and Dean pulled back an inch to look into his angel’s face he knew there was no way he would ever, ever let him go again. 

“Cas,” Dean whispered softly as he moved to press his lips to Castiel’s again.


End file.
